thousand-yard stare

Synonyms of thousand-yard stare

• thousand-mile stare
• hundred-yard stare

Forms of thousand-yard stare

Origin of thousand-yard stare

Such terms are usually said to have originated in the usage of soldiers and the physicians who treated them for combat wounds and combat stress. A search of a large corpus finds thousand-yard stare attested during World War II (citations from 1943 to 1945), naming a symptom of social isolation in far-flung posts or of combat stress; the absence of attestations of *-yard stare and *-year stare from before 1943 suggests that perhaps this symptom (from any mentally traumatic cause) was not called by these names until the 1940s. In contrast, the thematically related term shell shock was in use during World War I.

Related words

• dead-eyed
• post-traumatic stress disorder
• PTSD
• the elephant
• shell shock

Questions about thousand-yard stare

What does thousand-yard stare mean?

Thousand-yard stare means a blank, unfocused glance given by a traumatized person, especially a soldier who has seen combat.

What part of speech is thousand-yard stare?

Thousand-yard stare is a noun.

What is the plural of thousand-yard stare?

The plural of thousand-yard stare is thousand-yard stares.